Looking back at 1978 when U.S. President Jimmy Carter brought Israel’s Menachem Begin and Egypt’s Anwar Sadat together for an unlikely peace treaty, it’s striking how much we’ve forgotten about resolving conflicts — whether in the Mideast, Washington or Michigan. Finding “win-win” solutions shouldn’t be an afterthought for Arabs and Israelis, Republicans and Democrats, doves or hawks or any other two opposing groups.

Look at just two examples.

— Washington is the stage for the “fiscal cliff” impasse on expiring tax cuts and scheduled spending cuts. Democratic leaders including President Barack Obama are using their majority status and recent election wins to push demands for $1.6 trillion in new taxes and an end to Congress controlling the debt ceiling. That proposal is far beyond what Democrats sought just 12 months ago during the congressional Super Committee negotiations.

— Lansing, meanwhile, is roiled by Republican lawmakers passing “right to work” bills. Republicans leaders are using their majority status and recent election defeat of Proposal 2 to pass bills unions consider a direct assault. The bills advance a cause that Gov. Rick Snyder repeatedly said he did not want lawmakers to push as he focused on bigger economic issues.

At the risk of understatement, both problems are getting worse because none of the major groups has any experience finding “win-win” solutions.

The “win-win” concept is part of a larger study known as “game theory.” It’s a technical subject, producing eight Nobel Prize winners for Economics. Thomas Schelling’s ideas, for instance, helped develop “mutually-assured destruction,” used to reduce the risk of nuclear wars.

If you saw the film “A Beautiful Mind,” you might remember John Nash’s “ignore the blonde” solution involving men trying to hook up with women at a campus bar. Used (somewhat incorrectly) in the film to illustrate the Nash Equilibrium, it showed how more people usually end up happy when no one competes for the option that seems most attractive.

Sexy isn’t a typical description for the “fiscal cliff” or for “right to work.” Blustering about mandates or picking unnecessary fights is what we associate with obnoxious drunks. Sure enough, the prevailing game model in Washington and Lansing is “zero sum” — each “win” for one side automatically means a loss for the other.

Lansing’s GOP “zero sum” play is: “We can pass right-to-work, which union leaders hate, but they lost with Proposal 2 and they can’t stop us.”

Page 2 of 2 - Washington’s Democratic play is “zero sum squared”: “We can let tax rates on the vilified 1 percent go up without doing anything and, for Republicans to get a deal that avoids the cliff, we can force them to name all the unpopular cuts they seek to rein-in runaway Medicare, Social Security and Medicaid costs.”

Brinksmanship isn’t leadership, and one alternative would be the “cooperative game.” Here are two examples:

— In Washington, enact the Simpson-Bowles Plan. It reduces the deficit and neither side can claim credit for it. Politicians generally praise its efforts, but each side hates certain details in its mixture of cuts and taxes. In other words, it’s a very good starting point.

— In Lansing, lawmakers and labor should work together for an emergency manager law capable of handling Detroit’s impending bankruptcy — and agree to let voters decide the right-to-work issue. (See today’s related editorial.) No one wins if Detroit goes bankrupt, and there are no losers if right-to-work laws don’t pass right this instant.

The best way to cooperate on these cliffs, and the rapids beyond, might be like Paul Newman and Robert Redford in the film “Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid”: jump together. That also means a certain amount of concession. You can’t join a cooperative game if you refuse to budge due to a fear of drowning. That hardly matters when both parties acknowledge that, jumping together, “the fall will probably kill you.” (Agreeing to a peace treaty probably cost Sadat his life. Political leaders only risk their political lives.)

Of course, not demonizing the other side as “right-wing Scrooges” or “socialist thugs” might improve the trust needed for cooperation.

Here’s hoping your plans include plenty of “win-win” outcomes.

Mark Lenz, editor of The Daily Telegram, can be contacted at 265-5111, ext. 230, or via email at mlenz@lenconnect.com.